The bearer of one of the greatest names in the literature of Cuba and of Spain, José María Heredia, was born at Santiago de Cuba on December 31, 1803, and died at Toluca, Mexico, on May 7, 1839. Because of his early identification with the cause of Cuban freedom in the "Soles y Rayos de Bolivar" he was compelled to flee to the United States, whence he presently went to Mexico and there spent the remainder of his life, holding places of high rank and importance. He was at once advocate, soldier, traveller, linguist, diplomat, journalist, magistrate, historian, poet. His "Ode to Niagara" has made him illustrious in American literature. His general writings have given him conspicuous rank among the world's great lyric poets of the Nineteenth Century.] The most striking exemplar of the pro-Spanish attitude of which we have been speaking, as well as perhaps the greatest of all Cuban poets, was José Maria Heredia; of whom the world too often thinks as a Spanish rather than as a Cuban genius. He was born in Cuba in 1803, the son of parents who had fled from Santo Domingo to escape the fury of the revolution of Toussaint l'Ouverture. His father had formerly been a Chief Justice of the Venezuelan court at Caracas, under the Spanish government, and was loyal to Spain, though he detested and protested against her tyrannies and corruption and imbued his son with a passionate love of liberty. The younger Heredia established himself in the city of Matanzas, as a successful lawyer. But already he had written many poems, chiefly of freedom. They were in praise of Spain, and of the Spanish aspirations for liberty which were manifested in the Constitution of 1812. Indeed, never did Heredia commit himself against Spain, harshly as he was treated by her. But the poems which he had written in glorification of the Peninsular struggles for liberty against Napoleon and against the Bourbons were recognized by his countrymen to be equally applicable to the Cuban struggle against Spain, which was already impending, and they were consequently taken up throughout the island in that sense and for that purpose. This circumstance, though unintended by him, subjected him to grave suspicion; and he was presently charged with complicity in an insurrectionary movement in 1823, and was banished from Cuba for life. After a brief visit to the United States he went to Mexico, became a government official, married, and spent the rest of his life there, with the exception of a few weeks in 1836, when the Spanish authorities permitted him to revisit Cuba, though their espionage made his visit anything but pleasant. He died in 1839.